Month: September 2017

“You can never know what your words may turn out to mean for yourself or someone else; or what the world they make will be like. Anything could happen. The problem with silence is that we know exactly what it will be like.”- Hanif Kureishi, Loose Tongues, 2003

Books are banned for all sorts of reasons: politics, religion, sexual content, and morality are just a few. Take a look at this Wikipedia List of books banned by governments… Books are rarely banned altogether in the United States, but they are challenged regularly!!! And in the international community, many countries are still regularly banning books.

If you’re interested in seeing what books are being challenged in the US, check out this interactive Google Map to see what books were challenged between 2007-2011.

To understand the difference between Banned and Challenged books, take a look at this great guide created by our neighbors at Syracuse University Libraries. I also found this post from the Illinois Library Association listing books that have been “challenged, restricted, removed, or banned” between 2015-2016. There are great, short, one-paragraph explanations on why a particular book was challenged.

And don’t forget about our very own Banned Book Week display, courtesy of Dr. Arlette Miller-Smith and her Young Adult Literature course. This display will be in the library through 9/25-10/2, so come check it out, start a conversation with a friend about the books talked about, and for goodness-sake, read a banned or challenged book!!

In the Fall of 2015, Library staff began to daydream about finding a different library system to serve our back-office operations, like checking out materials and buying new books. We also dreamt of having a better library search box for all of you! We wanted to have better control over search results and better understand how our materials are being used. One year ago, Lavery Library signed a contract with Ex Libris, a well-established Israeli company that provides just these types of systems to libraries.

What did this change mean to us?

We worked hard to make sure all of our data about books, journals, and other materials transferred over to the new system, Alma, along with where they were shelved and how many times they’ve checked out. For ten months, we migrated all of our data, making sure that the things you need are available. Who knew that library staff were so tech-savvy?

Our change involved a lot of teamwork, including weekly meetings with a company trainer for the last 5 months. We are good at working with other departments! We worked closely with OIT as well as the staff at Nazareth College’s library and their IT department.

What does this change mean for you?

We designed the search box to be easy to use. We want to make sure that you can find the full-text content that you need easily and quickly. It’s also important for us to strengthen our relationships with the library staff at Nazareth College and make it easier for students to borrow materials at each others’ libraries. Of course, the Big Red Box is still there for you to locate materials, like the new DVDs we’ve bought over the summer!

What do you think?

We’re always working to improve! Let us know what you think of the changes, and we’ll keep your feedback and suggestions in mind as we tweak the system to make it more effective and user-friendly. Thanks!

This Letter from Lavery was penned by: Kate Ross and Ben Hockenberry

And to all our returning students, faculty, and staff — welcome back, we missed you!! The Library is too quiet without you. We hope you had a great summer.

This summer we completed a lot of projects. The biggest was our move to a new Library Management System; we welcome your constructive feedback about the new library features. In other news, and just in case you missed the news back in May, we won the Rochester Regional Library Council’s Academic Library of the Year. We are so humbled by all of our Fisher Family’s kind words about the Library and our staff. Thank you for very much!

We began Letters from Lavery last fall as a way to keep all of you up-to-date with Library news and share behind-the-scenes stories, and as we move into year two, we will keep writing to you, our Fisher Family. We publish bi-weekly throughout the semester. Never miss a post! Subscribe here: https://projects.sjfc.edu/laveryblog/feed/

Best wishes for a great year,

Melissa Jadlos, Library Director

P.S. Come take a look at the Lavery Library BookFace display — make your own bookface and tag us on social media #LaveryLibraryBookFace